Blogged

Time to face the strange changes: New look for STLtoday.com

STLtoday.com, the web analogue of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, has undergone yet another redesign - or, rather, has undergone the second phase of a redesign that began back in January. Whichever. It’s a good thing, because that website badly needed a new ‘do…but we’ve talked about that before.

So the new look is in place and…it’s better. Not perfect, mind you, but definitely better.

The paper gets props for going to to a 1024×768 resolution; that’s the baseline for users these days. The addition of a text resizer is welcome and will aid readability for the middle-agers who probbaly make up the majority of the STLtoday readers. The designers have finally gotten rid of the oppressive boxy frame that constrained the content. The accent color of the website has changed over time from a heavy blue to a garish red and now to a brick-like shade that is much easier on the eyes. The addition of new graphics and photos in the Blog Zone home page help to personalize that section, something that I found myself wishing for recently.

Perhaps the biggest addtion to the website is the inclusion of Technorati. The Washington Post’s pioneering use of Technorati showed how newspapers and weblogs can help each other - papers provide the content, and blogs deliver the eyeballs. I am very glad to see it in use at STLtoday. I note that this is likely the result of a new deal between Technorati and the Associated Press. I would certainly hope that the folks at the P-D will apply Technorati tracking to articles written by P-D staffers and not just AP stories.

There are some problems, of course, as there always are with redesigns. But I’m feeling generous today and see no need to mention them here…especially as I’ve already done so at the STLtoday site itself. For now, it’s be interesting to just sit back and watch the design undergo the necessary tweaks and rejiggerings as the readership gets used to the new scheme. Or schema. Whichever.

Similar posts:
New look for STLtoday.com
More ad subtlety at STLtoday
The Lumiere Place-Dispatch
Blogs at the Post-Dispatch: Good, or bad, or what?
At the Post-Dispatch, Drudge equals social networking

© 2006 Philip Barron.  Log in  Monitored by SiteUptime